- My story of cooking is more the memory of cooking than it is somebody actually teaching me how to cook.

[ghee sizzling] I learned, absorbed from my aunts, from my older sister.

I was so interested in cooking, I took classes from a neighborhood auntie.

She didn't even have a stove like we know of.

Everything was on the floor.

We sat on the floor, we chopped on the floor.

You know, we did all of that at ground-level really.

And gosh, when I think about some of those recipes, it makes me laugh.

I still have the book in which I handwrote recipes from that class.

[ethereal music] Cheeni Durham came out of the blue for me.

It's not something that I was looking for.

It was a scary leap to go from a smaller space into a prominent space in downtown Durham.

And now here I get to play.

I get to run a full-service restaurant where I've never even worked in one of those before.

I didn't know how this worked.

I figured it out!

So mine's not your typical story.

My name is Preeti Waas and home is North Carolina, a chosen home and also where my heart is.

[ethereal music fades] [psychedelic Carnatic music] I grew up in Madras, India.

It's now known as Chennai.

But my family is Punjabi, which is Northwest Indian.

India is such a vast region, and especially back then, you would think you're in different countries.

North, South, East, West, they're that different.

But we lived like Punjabis at home.

Our everyday food was very Punjabi, our rituals, traditions, all of that, but still very integrated in with South India, which was our home.

Punjabi is definitely represented on the menu in our Raja platter, in our Rani platters.

And even in the Raja platter, we have the Amritsari fish, and Amritsar is a city in Punjab and it has a very distinctive marinade.

Can you tell I'm salivating as I'm talking about the fish?

I really love it!

[Preeti laughs] Indian ingredients and vegetables are so specific and I'm so thankful we have a wealth of options here in Durham, Raleigh, and in Morrisville.

[vibrant funk music] - [Heather] Where are we?

- We're at Bombay Central Market.

This is where I do all my Indian grocery shopping.

[funk music continues] - [Heather] So what an asset is this for you, as an Indian chef in this area?

- I mean, without this, how could I cook Indian food?

[both women laughing] - [Heather] 'Cause everything's right here.

- 'Cause everything's right here!

Okay, wait, I have to have you smell curry leaves, okay?

- Oh my goodness!

- Right?

- Wow, that's amazing.

- Isn't it?

- Oh, yes!

- [Preeti] Have you cooked with banana flower before?

- No, but that is beautiful.

- Isn't it beautiful?

- It's so unique.

- Baby brinjals.

Of course, it says Indian eggplant here, but in India, we call them brinjal.

Okay, look how cute the pears are.

- Oh, they are cute!

You're like a kid in the candy store.

- How can you tell?

Like, I do get excited, I actually do.

- You are.

- Of course, we have bitter gourd.

This is a baby one.

- So how would you use bitter gourd?

- So bitter gourd is very, very bitter, so we remove the seeds and we make little circles, our little disks out of this, and we make a chaat out of it, which is unusual, but we use it in that way at Cheeni.

- I love that.

You use okra a lot.

- Okra is very important in Indian cuisine.

Every region of India has a dish that uses okra.

- Y'know, okra has a lot of Southern, North Carolina traits as well.

- What you have to look at is zoom out the geography and look at the geography of it.

Like, that band, that southern band below the Equator, it's so similar.

The climate is similar, the soil is similar.

'Cause we can choose to think about what divides us, but food, more often than not, y'know, brings us together.

[funk music fades] - [Padma] Hi, Preeti!

- Hello, hello!.

- [Padma] Hello!

- So good to see you!

- Great to see you.

- [Purvi] Please come in.

- [Preeti] What do you have?

- [Purvi] Some spices happening here!

- [Heather] Well, Preeti said this was life changing, that spices are life changing.

- [Padma] Aw, thank you!

- [Purvi] That's so sweet of you, I appreciate it.

- I mean, truly, like, even living in India, I don't think I had access to spices quite as fresh and aromatic as these.

- Oh, wow.

- What made you all start your company?

- Y'know, I grew up in India and I just, I'm used to a certain fragrance of spices, which when I came here, I felt like food just tasted different.

It turns out fresh spices were, like, an unmet need in this area.

- And that's when we realized, okay, we have a great opportunity to do something about it and make a difference.

We make it a point to source our spices from the regions where they grow the best.

For example, cloves and cinnamon and black pepper and cardamom grow the best in Southern India because the climate is better suited over there, versus coriander seeds or cumin, it grows better in the western part of the country.

- And is it really important for each chef, depending on where they grew up, what spices they really gravitate to?

- India's such an enormous country and we have all these different regions.

The cuisine really can change every hundred kilometers or so.

So for me, I use all of these spices because we have menu items from various regions of India.

- My family's from the western part of India, right, and for us, there is a blend specific that it goes in, like, everything Indian that I make.

And I would come home from school and my mom would be cooking something and I'd be like, "oh my gosh, I know exactly what she's making because of the smell!"

So, yeah, and that'll stay with me forever, and I made sure I wrote everything down from her.

[laughing] I was like, "I don't want forget it when I grow up!"

- When I first came to the United States in 1996, it was to visit my sister and help her with her children.

The water heater broke and she was very upset and she was crying at work about the water heater broke unexpectedly.

And so this nice coworker of hers said that he would come replace it for her.

So when I heard about that, I thought, "well, that's very nice of him, so the least I can do is cook."

I cooked, he came to replace the water heater, and it was really cute.

I think we talked until three or four in the morning out in the backyard.

And we dated for two weeks and eloped.

[quiet uplifting music] I was a stay-at-home mom until both girls were in school full-time and then I opened a cafe in Tulsa, Oklahoma called Lulu's Sweet Shop.

The menu was all American, everything was red, so it was very reminiscent of, like, a '50s diner, but fresh and cakes, cookies, pies.

- I remember just dancing around on the checkered black-and-white floor, just like we have in here, pouring over the sweets case, the lollipops, the chocolate chip cookies that she was slowly becoming more and more known for.

I also have a picture of my sister, my mom, and I sitting at a table in one of the Lulu's locations and I had a chocolate cookie right here half-eaten, and the chocolate chip was bigger than my tooth [giggling] and it just, it makes me feel like that exact kid again every single time I eat them.

- When they helped me at Lulu's, Amy was eight, Ellie was five.

Amy was a very shy child, really shy, but she put together very quickly that helping people meant that she got, A, praise and also tips!

- The idea of being a waitress seemed really appealing once I realized that bringing a sandwich to a table and smiling would result in a quarter or a dollar.

And this was so convenient because two storefronts down was a shop that sold my favorite stuffed animals.

- The first time she ever worked the floor at the restaurant, Amy was eight years old and she earned $34 of tips that day.

Next thing you know, apron comes off, takes her little sister by her hand, goes three doors down to the gift shop, and she bought Beanie Babies.

So we had quite a collection of Beanie Babies, all from the tip earnings.

When we moved to North Carolina, I thought, "I'm done with the food business.

I'm not doing that again."

But the YMCA on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, they had their little coffee kiosk available and they asked if I was interested in perhaps taking that over and selling coffee there.

Something rose up within me and I was like, "you know what?

What I miss a lot is the ubiquitous corner shops in India where you could get a cup of chai, you could get a veg puff, but what if I did that?"

Cheeni Chai Coffee Tiffin in downtown Raleigh surprised me as to how well it did.

I was very validated by how well it did.

So Cheeni Indian Food Emporium was the next iteration after Cheeni Chai Coffee Tiffin, and that was the combination of the cooking school, the bazaar, and the little cafe.

I thought, "if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna take a big leap and I'm going to fail spectacularly, or it might do okay."

What happened [laughing] was completely unexpected.

- Wild is how Preeti Waas describes being nominated for the James Beard Best Chef in the Southeast Award.

She describes herself as a home cook who just loves serving people food.

- I'm not a trained chef, so James Beard and Preeti Waas were never gonna be in the same sentence for me.

- Did you find out from, like, WRIL or something?

- The reporter from Triangle Business Journal called- - So it was a reporter who called?

- Oh yes, she called to ask for a statement and I said, "for what?"

I did not expect two James Beard nominations for Best Chef.

I did not expect Eater's Carolinas' Restaurant of the Year.

I did not expect the community that we gained.

I did not expect that what was so pushed down inside of me for over two decades was the thing that was going to bring me the belonging that I saw in America.

[funk music fades] [mellow electronic music] - How are you?

Good, what can I do for y'all?

- What I hope for when people walk in the door is that it feels familiar, it feels like home, it feels like a space that they don't have to be fussy in.

The food is not fussy.

They don't have to be, quote unquote, "on their best behavior".

It's not fine dining, but it's refined dining according to me.

- When people come to Cheeni, I hope they feel as if there has been intention and thought and love and care and hard work above and beyond everything else that has brought that experience to life.

- Yes.

Thank you!

Oh my god!

Yes!

Welcome in, y'all.

How are you today?

It was one night, it was really rainy, and we just finished our little gym practice and I remember being so excited because I was cold and all I wanted was the chicken pot pie that I knew was waiting for me back at Lulu's.

And I'll always remember that, for sure, just the comfort and the excitement of knowing "my mom has made one of my favorite foods for us and I don't have to worry about anything.

I can just go enjoy it."

So maybe that just comes with being a kid, but I still feel that way about my mom's food, no matter what she's cooking really.

Thanksgiving meal, Indian food, anything, she just does it well.

[mellow music continues] [mellow music continues] [mellow music continues] [mellow music fades] [no audio]